Association between an overall maternal healthy lifestyle and the risk of obesity in offspring

Currently one in five american children are suffering obesity. With these figures growing each year, it has become a public health priority to identify modifiable risk factors for the prevention of childhood obesity. The causes of obesity are complex, however can be divided into genetic causes and lifestyle causes. These lifestyle causes often lead to rapid weight gain, suggesting that “nurture” carries more weight than “nature” in driving the current pandemic.

This paper, published in the BMJ, sought to examine the association between a healthy maternal lifestyle and the risk of developing obesity in offspring. A healthy lifestyle was characterised by healthy BMI, high quality diet, regular exercise, no smoking and light to moderate alcohol intake. Overall, it was found that a healthy lifestyle in the mother was associated with substantially lower risk of obesity in their children. If they adhered to the five low risk lifestyle factors, the children had a 75% lower risk of developing incident obesity than children of mothers who did not adhere to any of the low risk lifestyle factors.

Although this paper cannot draw any conclusions as to the mechanism of this relationship, their findings highlight maternal lifestyle choices as a potentially crucial factor in the aetiology of childhood obesity, adding weight to the argument that parent and family based interventions for reducing childhood obesity are a crucial and important target.